Wow, OGN readers, we’ve seen some rough E3 shows in the past, but it looks like Bethesda has taken the cake with a major technical breakdown during their Sunday evening presentation. Attendees actually ended up fleeing the L.A. Convention Center in droves after a glitch in the company’s presentation resulted in a high-level deathclaw spawning right on the conference’s main floor.

People are going to be talking about this embarrassing slip-up for years.

Witnesses in the Convention Center first reported seeing the scaled beast frozen in place and hovering 10 feet above the ground about 15 minutes into Bethesda’s time slot. Confused onlookers pointed and watched as it flashed in and out of existence a few times before dropping stock-still to the ground. The 12-foot-tall beast unfroze as soon as it hit the ground and then went to work, with several nearby fans quickly being torn asunder by it’s massive, razor-sharp claws while others screamed and fled for the door. Bethesda reps later claimed the spawn was a simple mistake in the code of the presentation, but this kind of sloppiness doesn’t bode well for future press conferences, that’s for sure.

Advertisement

E3 security forces did reportedly try to confront the rampaging level-30 monster, but their tasers were of little use against its heavily armored skin, and the deathclaw was able to easily crush their skulls and toss them aside. Most attendees managed to escape after the deathclaw glitched back to its original spawn point and it’s poor pathfinding caused it to get stuck behind a metal door. However, Todd Howard’s face still must have been red when screams emanated from the far corners of the convention center and blood splattered the booths lining the main floor.

Where’s a minigun when you need one?

Bethesda’s glitches have always been present, but they usually fall into the realm of the small and charming, like during the Fallout 4 announcement when Howard froze on stage and had to be manually rebooted. This, however, was a press conference-breaking bug, and it’s going to take a while for the studio to regain the trust of fans. Bethesda reps have responded to criticism of the bloodbath by claiming that 95% of the presentation worked completely fine, although they did apologize for falling short of fan expectations. Maybe they should have spent a little more time testing the presentation before rolling it out?